Hello and thanks for reading. I am part of a large research study and we have about 150 Acer TravelMate 2480 laptops. We stick these laptops behind or under furniture, out of the way, and leave them there untouched. They have a couple programs running to collect data and that is all. We only connect to them remotely occasionally if something seems wrong with the data collection from a house. By the way, they are connected wirelessly to routers we put in as well. Anyway, the problem with these laptops is that we have had quite a few hang/freeze inexplicably. When they hang, the data collection programs stop and it becomes remotely inaccessible. After hard booting them off and restarting them they sometimes only show a black/blank screen, but otherwise act like they are started up just fine. Other times after hard booting them off and restarting them they act normal showing all screens during startup. The windows event logs show no errors or indicators of commonality between the crashes. All drivers are up to date. We are running Windows XP on them. If you have any ideas, please help. Thanks again.

what are the under the furniture laptops sitting on?? sounds like some are overheating. lotsa dust can gather under or behind furniture, i've never ever heard of such. laptops need lotsa air movement in and around, the cooling fans need a clean environment. you folks must not had to have paid for these.

They have a couple programs running to collect data and that is all Care to tell us what type of data were they collecting? i_Xp/VistaUser

I agree with mountain. Laptops tend to run hot and if they are put in places with very little air movement, that's not too good.

mountain, The laptops under furniture are typically on carpet or hardwood floor, but mostly carpet. I thought it could be overheating as well, but my destructive overheating test did neither destroy or overeheat the laptop to the point of a freeze or crash. Let me assure you, we did have to pay for all these laptops. XpUser, They are collecting X10 data from motion sensors via a serial-to-USB cord and antenna. I'd tell you more, but I'd have to kill you... just kidding. aegis, I agree with yours and mountain's train of thought. I'm going to try a MORE destructive test this week, wrapping the laptop in a blanket stuffed under a couch.

The computer passed the MORE destructive test with flying colors. No problems on overheating. And it was super hot, I was afraid the battery would explode. PLUS, when we retrieve computers that have failed in the field they are never that hot.